Roger Michell praises Blackbird cast for keeping energy alive during complicated scenes

Director Roger Michell has praised the star-studded ensemble cast of his new movie Blackbird for keeping the energy alive after multiple takes during certain group scenes.

The Notting Hill moviemaker directed the likes of Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Sam Neill, and Mia Wasikowska for his latest drama, about a family who gather for one final hurrah before the terminally ill matriarch, played by Sarandon, takes her own life with her husband’s assistance.

Many of the scenes in the movie involve all eight cast members in one room, sometimes talking over each other, and Michell has admitted one of them, the fake Christmas dinner scene, took a long time to perfect yet his cast brought the energy on every take.

“That (scene) involved eight of them around the table, eating, drinking, talking over each other, and it’s a long scene, I think it’s sort of 13 or 14 pages, so it was a daunting prospect,” he admitted in an exclusive interview with Cover Media. “It’s so hard to keep that energy going night after night after night – we had to shoot that over three nights – and so thank goodness the cast were so wonderful in keeping it alive on the 10th, 11th, 12th take, even though we had two cameras, there was a repetition, you had to do things time and time again, and they kept it as fresh as the first time they did it, it was wonderful.”

Although the subject matter of euthanasia is rather dark and serious, Michell revealed that everyone had a lot of fun on set.

“(The atmosphere) was raucous and there was a lot of laughter. Normally, the subject matter of a film is in inverse proportion to the mood on the set. The darker, more solemn and more tragic the material, the more laughter you’ll hear on the set and this was no exception… we had a really fun time making this,” he gushed.

Blackbird is available on digital download and DVD now.